It has finally arrived - Saturday's finals day at the George Sevens represents the end of a rugby year that started locally on the last Sunday in January, which was when the Stormers beat Saracens in a pre-season friendly at Newlands.
This is also the time of the year yours truly issues his own set of awards, so let's get cracking:
It is hard to ignore the Springboks after a Tri-Nations win, but in terms of emphatically underlining their class over a 12-month period, the Bulls must surely pip the national team. Whereas the late season stumbles introduced doubts over whether the Boks ended the season as the top international team, and the current world rankings give backing to that, the Bulls went on from their emphatic Super 14 triumph to reclaim the Currie Cup. If they are not the best provincial team in world rugby, I would love to see the team that is.
There has to be a tie here. The Bulls' destruction of the Chiefs in the Super 14 final was a monstrous performance that set the tone for the Bok achievements that followed. And I don't think I have ever seen the All Blacks as comprehensively outplayed as they were by the Springboks in the Durban Tri-Nations Test match.
Who other than John Smit, and methinks this is the third year in a row that he has won this award. In fact, I also gave him coach of the year in 2008, which he could well have won again, such was his immense contribution to the Bok success both on and off the field.
The IRB Awards panel got it all wrong when they gave their award to New Zealand captain Richie McCaw. It should have gone to Fourie du Preez, and Victor Matfield would have been a worthy runner-up.
This took a lot of thought, for I would love to have given this award to Paul Treu, the Springbok Sevens coach who was apparently runner-up to Declan Kidney of Ireland in the IRB Awards. Treu defines what a coach should be, and there can be no denying that he built the Bok Sevens success from scratch. Indeed, his innovative coaching may even have reinvented some aspects of the Sevens game. But it simply has to go to Peter de Villiers. I know, I know, I have many, many reservations over the Bok coach, and they have been listed ad nauseam in these pages through the year, but he was the man in charge of the team that won the Tri-Nations and a Lions series. In light of that, it would be petty not to make him the coach of the year.
It would be one of three, all kicked by fellows with the surname of Steyn. Morne won the series against the Lions with that stupendous last gasp effort at Loftus, and he kept the Bulls in the Currie Cup with an even more difficult pressure kick at Newlands. The Boks probably would not have beaten the All Blacks in Hamilton were it not for the monsters put over by Frans.
Of the three Bok coaches, Gary Gold is the only one who can be regarded as a cerebral, pragmatic rugby thinker, and he played a massive role behind the scenes in helping the senior players ensure that the Boks played the style of rugby that suited them this year. There are some who feel he was exposed by the Boks' poor scrumming this season, but if there was fault it lay more with the front-row selection, over which he has little control. And if you cast your mind back to last season, the performances of the Bok scrum in most of the 2008 Tri-Nations campaign give the lie to any theory that he is a poor scrum coach.
Oops, I got this one horribly wrong. I had my reservations about Heinrich Brëssow, and would still like to wait until his 20th Test before writing it in indelible ink, but with every match Brëssow confirms his ability to be what a player in his position is meant to be - a complete pain in the butt to the opposition.
Jaque Fourie's powerful effort against the Lions in the second Test at Loftus.
Again this one goes to Div. Just what was said to the national coach between the Lions series and the Tri-Nations by the sponsors and SA Rugby administration will remain a secret, but whatever it was, it had the desired effect. He would have won a lot of friends with his refusal to take the players' limelight when they clinched the Tri-Nations in Hamilton.
Luke Watson started the season as the villain who was booed at Newlands, he left it as an undoubted hero who appeared to do a heck of a lot of growing up in a short period of time.
Of course, this has to also go to Div. Others would give it to the black mechanic/white mechanic analogy, but for me the worst was his Gloria Gaynor impersonation: "I am what I am, and I don't give a damn". That might be a good line to take when talking to your psychologist, but when you are the national coach you cannot just be who you want to be - there are just too many stake-holders in the game for that approach.
Div's selections rank high up here, particularly Adi Jacobs at inside centre, but the biggest shock I got was seeing the Stormers start off the Super 14 season playing a style of rugby that Rassie Erasmus used to expose and beat on a weekly basis when he was coaching the Cheetahs. It just goes to show, even clever coaches, and Erasmus is probably the cleverest of them all, can also get it wrong.
When I told him the Boks had lost four out of five on tour, a Bok management member told me I was being disingenuous when I referred to the midweek team as Boks. Try another one. They were selected as Springboks and sent on tour as Boks, so they were Boks. Had the midweek team beaten Saracens or Leicester by a record score, they would have been happy to claim it.
Just as Ian McGeechan's tactical insight may have won the 1997 series for the Lions, so his selection blunders and strategy calls cost the Lions the series this time. The Lions would probably have won the series were it not for the lightweight pack chosen for the Durban Test and the deployment of a multi-phase approach at Loftus Versfeld a week later.
Gert Smal's success against the Boks for Ireland showed us what the British & Irish Lions might have achieved had Jake White been appointed as coach. After all, he wrote the bulk of the play-book that the Boks are still playing off.
What was Heyneke Meyer doing writing a newspaper column during the Tri-Nations? The Bulls players who carried the Bok success were all weaned on Meyer innovations. He should have been coaching.
The Sharks were the team of the tournament at varying stages of both the Super 14 and the Currie Cup. They ended the season with their trophy cabinet empty.